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if it were not for the complicated engineering challenges that cropped up along the way, i do not know if i would have finished this project. the problems were the only thing that kept me interested in this job.

if this were a commercial scope of work , they had all the right things built into thier quote, to include daily debris removal, dust barrier, exhaust fans and elephant trunks, the whole nine yards. they had option A which was cheaper than 22k , that required us to not have access to the living room for 7days. then a structural examination in order to support the chimney 45deg angles similar to what i did but they insisted i didnt need rebar. I was really against not using rebar, its such a cheap insurance policy i am dumbfounded as to why they were pushing back on it.

So, did you actually put the fireplace back the way it came or did you still leave some modifications to get better heat output? I'm eyeballing one of their inserts as a way to supplement our older heat pump which frankly, doesn't work below 40 degrees.

the final picture is now our only source of heat.
we have that huge opening and the wood gasifier sitting right there as shown.

we hit some cold temps here lately.

with the wood burner choochin' and strategically placed fans we moved air easily.

I am a veteran wood burner but for the first time in my life, i started doing a air movement test in my own home.
I fired up some insense sticks and walked around the house upstairs and down stairs to understand the air movement.

example of what i found.

I discovered that in order to get "HEAT INTO" the upstairs master bedroom, i needed a fan on the floor at the doorway moving air ***OUT*** into the hallway.
doing this i saw the insense smoke was full speed moving into the bedroom when i held the insense stick up high.

in the wifes office (spare bedroom down stairs), I mounted a tiny fan up high in the doorway to toss in warm air. the insense smoke was moving cool out down low out into the hall way.

the lessons here are ,, dont assume just because your have a fan on the floor blowing air into a room that it should heat up.
follow the old rule that heat rises and cool air falls. move the air with very low RPM quiet fans and you will start up the whirlpool effect of air movement.

in the living room 15' away from the fire box we held 76degF when it was cold last week... below zero. The furtherest point upstairs and far away from the fire box was 69degF.

I would have not achieved this heating if i had not studied how my particular floor plan moves air. each home would be different.

10 thumbs up for Voglezang TR007 wood burner. Remember,, its actually burning wood gas when you get er' choochin!

A concern for safety ....
I may have mentioned this before but......................
when or if those NASA orbit re-entry heat shields fail which are above the stainless overhead tubes, then fail meaning they are torn or broken,, then you will put down a F@#% load of heat on your large flat surface. A F@%* load meaning more than 800degF!!!!

the top plate steel needs upgraded to withstand this instance. Right now its a tad under 1/4'' ,,, not sure wat ASTM guage it is but due to my experiments, i did get it glowing once.

Another issue is that if your flue is larger than the colar on the stove (6''), you will quickly discover that when you get this thing choochin, it will over heat easily. Without electricity moving air over the top of the stove, you have to simply "wait it out". if your flue is over 6'', tech support and i discovered its best to just burn no more than 2 pcs of wood at a time. 2pcs will last you about 6 good hours of heat anyway with this unit.

I upgraded my stove to incorporate a folding screen door. we notied something here at our house....
when you have a thick bed of coals, opening the glass door you could lengthen the time between reloads by using the termal radiant heat off the coals. We then close the screen door which i fabricated and that instantly puts out some unbearable but appreciated BTU into the room the stove is in. with fans the heat quickly moves about.

as a general rule now, we burn two pieces of wood and when they become a bunch of large coals, we latch in the screen door for an hour and a half, then add more wood.

if you want a pic of the screen door adder i did, i can post.

anyone interested in a product that will exceed your heating expectations pls dont hesitate to talk with me about it,, this one is the cats meow hands down.
304 772 3411

as i said earlier, dont waste yoru money on thier blower,, i did and it does nothing. I believe it has more to do with "how the blower is mounted" and not the blower itself. I think they way they have it mounted, its cfm is slowing itself down because its pushing air directly into a steel wall which is only 3/4'' way.

example.

turn on your floor fan.
get a flatened out cardboard box and hold it up to the output side of the fan.
set up an insense stick on the back of the fan.

put the flat cardboard up to the face of the fan so that its like 1'' away.

notice now the insense stick smoke is not getting sucked in as well if any at all,, and notice the sound of the fan motor drops? its getting locked out with high static loss.